Vord verifier

[Emma May Smith]

So your theory is that this table, or something like it, was used to generate Voynich words?

Hi Emma,

I am considering the idea that the scribe may have used a table like this to produce vords, but not in a meaningless way (like the "table-and-grille" idea). I don't have an exact theory, but I've been wondering if the VMS is not linguistic text but meta-text. Perhaps each individual vord is really a set of inputs / a set of "instructions", which you then plug into some table to get a plaintext output. Perhaps something like this:

• [qo present]+[any galllows]+[ch]+[any group from column 6]+[o]+[any group from column 11] → one specific output
  
• [qo not present]+[any gallows]+[ch]+[any group from column 11]+[y] → a different specific output
  
• [qo not present]+[no gallows]+[ch]+[a/o]+[any group from column 11] → yet a third different output
  

I'm just so perplexed by all the components that seem to "switch out" for one another, like <Sh> and <ch> - but this is all speculation. Please feel free to point out holes you may see!

No, that's great, I just wasn't sure. There have been a number of attempts to model Voynich words (I've tried too), and they seem to fall into two categories:

1) attempts to generalize the structure which is obvious to any researcher; and
2) attempts to generate the text as a means of explaining its origin.

The first is part of analysis and the second of theorizing. I'm happy that either can be productive but I wanted to make sure which one you're pursuing. I quite agree that the seeming "modularity" of words is a bit of a puzzle.